Acclaimed American actress Martha Plimpton will make her London theatre debut in the Old Vic’s forthcoming UK premiere of Other Desert Cities alongside fellow new cast members Peter Egan and Daniel Lapaine.
The cross-continent trio complete casting for Lindsay Posner’s in-the-round production that will star the previously announced Sinéad Cusack and Clare Higgins and play from 13 March at the Waterloo venue.
Plimpton, who will still be best known to many UK audiences for her role in the iconic 1980s coming-of-age film The Goonies, will lead the cast in Jon Robin Baitz’s award-winning drama. She plays Brooke Wyeth who, returning home for the first time in six years, brings with her the relationship-straining news that she has written a memoir revealing a painful and pivotal moment in the family’s history.
Following her profile-raising roles in numerous 1980s films including Parenthood, Another Woman and Running On Empty, Plimpton has gone on to forge a successful career on the New York stage, gathering a collection of Tony Award and Drama League nominations for her many leading roles.
Recent credits include starring turns opposite Ethan Hawke in The Coast Of Utopia and Marisa Tomei in Top Girls, as well as boasting extensive work with Chicago’s famous Steppenwolf Theatre Company. Still also a regular face on screen, Plimpton’s numerous television appearances include current series Raising Hope, as well as ER, How To Make It In America and her Emmy Award-winning performance in The Good Wife.
While the actress makes her London debut in the show, Peter Egan and Daniel Lapaine are both familiar faces to the West End. Egan’s theatre work includes the National Theatre’s People and West End productions including Secret Rapture, Art and Déjà Vu, while Lapaine, whose recent credits include All My Sons at the Apollo and The Dance Of Death at Trafalgar Studios 2, returns to the Old Vic following 2012’s critically acclaimed production of Hedda Gabler.
Other Desert Cities follows Lucy Bailey’s Fortune’s Fool, which will come to the end of its run on 22 February.